Voiceless

Flailing, twisted, contorted and trapped within a prison of my own creation. Thoughts that travel from my mind quickly swallowed and digested uncomfortably down my gullet or grotesquely heaved and spat out in a nervous haste, no longer the eloquent, intelligent thought once processed in my brain, the enlightening shine now rotting and dull, messy and fumbled, inarticulate and too late.

I lacked a tongue, I lacked a voice. It was snuffed out by those who had grown impatient and tired, tired of the politics, tired of the history and tired of the stories. I became scared that the conversations where I wanted to express what was left of my identity would be ridiculed and minimised into the black girl always bringing race into things. I didn’t want to be that girl, so I locked that voice away.

Outwardly I would laugh, talk, shout and dance but some mornings were silent, I refused to glance anywhere but down. My voice become more and more faded, absent and even silent. I felt my presence waning, seeking to not bring attention to my hair, my skin and my body. The nicknames they called me...Beyonce, Michelle and Serena, all people who empower me today but represented something too big for me to understand at that age, so I hated it, I knew it must have been a cruel joke I had to passively smile along to because I could never look as beautiful as Beyonce, Michelle was middle aged with a conservative hairstyle which happened to look similar to my failed weave attempt and Serena was dark and muscular something that I had not aligned with beauty when compared to what TV, magazines and my friends were saying.

My voice lacked the education and confidence to talk effortlessly among my peers, for fear they wouldn’t understand. In a secondary school, where the majority were white students, it’s easy to repress or lose out on that significant educational experience of learning about you.

My family and the small knit black community we had through church were a refuge, but not enough. The Fresh Prince of Bel air and My Wife and Kids were a starting point and Malorie Blackman was next on the list but both represented something totally different to the world I was living in. Still, I could not speak on what I felt, what I had watched, and what I had read as none of them were real, at least not to me and especially not to them. I needed something tangible, an experience to shape and strengthen my voice, to give it some substance.

I was given this experience on a warm afternoon after school with a friend. Two guys, one with a tattered union jack decorated cap and the other with a large beer can in his hand were walking on the path opposite us. There sudden shouts ripped through the gap between us and hit me with a sting, the word “nigger” forming for the first time in my life a different meaning and intention than I heard comfortably on the music my brother listened to. Certainly this would awaken the sleeping voice inside me, a voice no longer silent on the injustice on the news, no longer silent on the false entitlement of uninvited hands on my hair or the lack of education and representation about people who look like me. To my amazement, the sting did not make me react with yells and shouts or create a new found fire and passion, instead the cooling effect of indifference washed through me. I did not utter a single word. Instead I stared long and hard as the two men walked past with their fists in the air.

Well that was it I thought. Maybe this black justice thing just wasn’t for me? I grew older still growing more and more silent in the presence of others on those topics, content on rapping to Iggy, learning about Shakespeare and becoming the ‘sassy’ black friend even though my insides twisted at the term, became bored with the colourless often racist plays and wondered why a white girl was trying so hard to be black.

Sixth Form was a positive change for me, a chance of a freedom I had never felt before. The stifling presence of the educational system was slightly lifted to give me room to breathe and I quickly learnt that my voice could be present in other ways of expressions. My voice didn't necessarily have to be my voice; it could be my art, my writing, my reading, and my silence.

The books I decided to write about were by Africans and those from the Diaspora. The textile projects I began to sew and create were dripping with cultural heritage from Ankara to beading. Everything I began to invest myself in became a subtle challenge and opposition to all I was previously forced to learn.

My journey has led to the regaining and redefinition of my voice, becoming something unique and understandable maybe only to me. It's influence is evident in this website. It is evident in my choices in life like my course and University. It has helped me learn that just because my voice couldn't be heard in conventional ways, it didn’t mean I was not passionate and longing to express something that was and still is very close and important to my heart. My blackness and how proud I am of it.

#identity #blackness #school #racism #voice #expression #education